A senior Obama administration official told reporters on Monday that American citizens who have fought alongside the ISIS terror army have managed to come back into the country and are under active surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The stunning revelation came ten days after a Democratic New York congressman spilled the beans with a public but little-noticed claim that there were 40 such 'foreign fighter' jihadis back on U.S. soil.

In a gathering with selected journalists, the administration official acknowledged that it's true.

The National Counterterrorism Center's latest determination, the official said, 'includes those who've gone, those who've tried to go, some who've come back and are under active – the FBI is looking at them.'

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White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest declined to discuss specifics on Monday but wouldn't dispute what another senior Obama administration official said hours earlier -- that ISIS jihadis are among us

New York Democratic Rep. Tim Bishop told the Long Island Metro Business Action group on Sept. 12 that 40 Americans have returned to the U.S. after going overseas to fight for ISIS, and that the FBI has all of them under surveillance

The Pentagon said initially only about a dozen Americans have gone overseas to join up with ISIS, but now the administration concedes that some of them have returned successfully and are currently in the US

'These are FBI matters,' added the official, whose name reporters were expected not to report as a condition of attending the briefing. 'I refer you to them on specifics.'

The revelation marks the Obama administration's first confirmation of what Rep. Tim Bishop said Sept. 12 when he described to a Long Island audience how as many as 40 Americans have returned to the U.S. after fighting for the ISIS terror army overseas.

He said also that the FBI already has all of them all under surveillance.

'One of the concerns is the number of U.S. citizens who have left our country to go join up with ISIS,' he told the Long Island Metro Business Action, a regional economic development organization. 'It is believed there have been some number up to 100 that have done that.'

'It is also believed that some 40 of those who left this country to join up with ISIS have now returned to our country. Those 40 are under FBI attention and surveillance. So they are known and they are being tracked by the FBI.'

'ISIS' refers to the self-declared Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, a murderous terror army that has left a wake of death, destruction, kidnapping and rape as it conquered more than one-third of Iraq and Syria.

Josh Earnest, the White House Press Secretary, said Monday during his regular press briefing that he couldn't comment on what would by definition be 'relatively sensitive intelligence information.'

But he did say that the U.S. is 'working very closely with our international partners to try to mitigate this threat, to keep eyes on these individuals and to monitor their movements.'

'We've also been working closely with Interpol ... to track the movements of these individuals,' Earnest said. 'So this is an inter-agency response to a significant threat that we're watching closely.'

The official who spoke Monday said the National Counterterrorism Center now estimates that 15,000 militants from 80 countries have at least made attempts to fight for Islamist groups in Iraq and Syria.

That number includes 100 Americans and another 2,000 from Europe.

Rogues' gallery; Salah Osman Ahmed (left) traveled to Somalia in December 2007 to train with al-Shabaab. Zachary Chesser (center), a 30-year-old Virginia man, drew a 25-year prison sentence for helping the same group. Ahmed Mohamed Isse (right) is listed among the September 2013 attackers on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya

Americans: Jamal Bana (left) was killed in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, in July 2009 while fighting with an Islamist group. when he was 19 years old. Farah Mohamad Beledi (center) carried out a suicide bombing on May 30, 2011, targeting a military base and killing three. Jehad Serwan Mostafa (right) remains at large after being indicted for aiding a terrorist group in 2010

An ISIS leader told followers on Monday that they should execute lone -wolf attacks in the United States and France because those two nations are the ones that have been flying bombing sorties against the group in Iraq.

CNN reported that an ISIS spokesman issued a call to 'hinder those who want to harm your brothers. The best thing you can do is to strive to your best and kill any disbeliever, whether he be French, American or from any of their allies.'

'Civilians should not be exempt from brutality,' he said. 'Do not ask for anyone's advice and do not seek anyone's verdict. Kill the disbeliever whether he is civilian or military, for they have the same ruling. Both of them are disbelievers. Both of them are considered to be waging war.'

ISIS can now muster 31,000 troops overall, the CIA reported on Sept. 17. That number has grown dramatically since June 29, when ISIS declared itself a 'caliphate' – an Islamic nation led by a supreme religious authority.

American jihadis, part of a swelling 'foreign fighter' contingent aiding ISIS and other terror networks, could put their ideologies and experience to work in the United States, a fact that has some in Congress clamoring for easier ways to revoke their citizenship.

The Pentagon said two weeks ago that only about a dozen Americans had left the country to join up with ISIS, while as many as 100 are suspected of taking up arms with a wider range of Islamist extremist groups in the Middle East and Africa.

Foreign fighters: As many as 12,000 soldiers in the 31,000-man ISIS terror army have traveled into Syria or Iraq to join the Islamist group in battle

Bishop, the member of Congress who first discussed the size of the U.S> foreign-fighter problem publicly, insisted that they don't pose a serious threat.

'At the present time,' he told his Sept. 12 audience, 'the intelligence is ISIS does not present a threat to the homeland, although that is not something that will remain static going out into the future.'

'But there is a concern,' Bishop allowed, 'that it could metastasize in such a way that it could become a threat to the homeland.'

Bishop backed President Barack Obama's approach to defeating the terrorist would-be country, which he said 'is a very, very complex and very, very dangerous threat.'

Referring to remarks Obama delivered on Sept, 10, he said, 'I think the plan that the president outlined the other night [in his national speech] is a good plan.'

The president 'is correct to recognize the threat, and it clearly is a threat to the stability of the Middle East, a region that is already remarkably unstable.'

On Thursday, Senate Democrats thwarted legislation that would have revoked the citizenship of Americans who swear allegiance to terror groups that threaten the U.S.

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Obama administration confirms American ISIS fighters have returned and 'the FBI is looking at them' after terror army calls for attacks on the US